


no rest for the weary

by reylo_garbagecan



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Force Bond, Nightmares, Sleep Deprivation, ben can't sleep, that was a pun, the force does not want to be awakened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 18:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15225483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reylo_garbagecan/pseuds/reylo_garbagecan
Summary: Rey does not appreciate it that Ben keeps her awake by making noise at night. Ben does not appreciate it that Rey tries to make him sleep.“The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.” -Leonard Cohen





	no rest for the weary

To say that Rey was annoyed was an understatement. It didn’t help that she was so _tired_. All of it was _his_ fault, of course. Maybe it wasn’t his fault that the connections kept happening, and she knew that there was no control of what time they happened. However, he was always so noisy, and he certainly didn’t have to be—and what was worse—his visits had gotten longer.

The incessant scratching of a quill on parchment filled the once quiet room and grated on Rey’s absolute last nerve. With a growl, she bolted upright and threw her pillow at his head. He instinctively hunched in on himself with an almighty flinch, and she firmly ignored the guilt at the errant thought of how those instincts had developed over the sad course of his life. The pillow went through him because, of course, he wasn’t really there.

“You know, it’s night where some people are,” she sniped as he turned to face her.

“Yes, it is,” he deadpanned, his features showing no hint of expression, “in fact, my chronometer tells me I have four hours yet until the beginning of the day cycle. You might consider not disturbing me.”

Her face flushed red, “ _Me_ disturb _you_? Excuse me, but if you would consider _not_ making every noise possible, I could potentially _not_ throw things at you.”

His left eye twitched, the only sign that he was affected in any way by her, “What would you have me do then? Sit and watch you snore? I’m afraid to inform you that you’re hardly that interesting.”

Rey would have laughed if some very small piece of her pride was not wounded, “You could try sleeping like any normal person? Even monsters sleep, Kylo.”

Maybe the barb was too sharp. Remorse spread through her bones as soon as the words and that name left her lips. He visibly flinched once again, but it was less the instinctual one born from a life of fear and rather a hurt lancing through the system reminiscent of betrayal. A mournful smile played at his lips as he recovered himself.

Perhaps he meant it to come out as a tease of some nature, but his voice was much too soft, “Not Ben anymore? I suppose all childish delusions must end at some point.”

“No,” Rey nearly shouted before remembering not to wake the entire Resistance base, “no, _Ben_. I’m sorry, Ben. I’m exhausted because you’ve woken me up every night for the past two weeks. Why _don’t_ you sleep then?”

His features remained impassive, but he humored her anyway, “Not everyone found peace and rest after being granted freedom.”

Of course, she remembered— _at night, desperate to sleep_ —that had been true for him too hadn’t it? She’d learned what peace was once she’d been freed from the junk bosses and the lethal sandstorms and the stinging sun, and she’d finally been able to sleep (and wasn’t that why it bothered her so much that he was sabotaging her). He’d killed Snoke but sleep still eluded him. Maybe that wasn’t fair. Rey hadn’t noticed, but his dark circles really were quite dark.

She scrunched her eyebrows in confusion, “I understand struggling to find rest, but Ben, you don’t sleep at all. You’re going to fall out.”

He smiled just slightly, “It always happens in my quarters. I think I may have another week.”

Rey scoffed, “That’s hardly healthy!”

His eyes flashed in warning, “Perhaps you should ask yourself why this upsets you so much.”

Her mouth clamped shut as she had been wrestling the same question, and he seemed to take pity and return to the gentle tone he had before, “It shouldn’t upset you. This has been routine since even before I fell. I have it well under control.”

As if the Force had a sense of humor, he faded away from her wide eyes just as she was about to ask him to elaborate on his choice of words. Surely a committed acolyte of the dark would never describe his turn as a _fall_. Not to mention, regardless of why she felt so strongly about it, she could tell most certainly that it was not _under control_. In a punch of irony that was not lost on Rey, she fell back onto her bed—no pillow as she had thrown it at a certain head of dark hair—and she promptly fell asleep.

Each night, he continued to come to her, but he ceased to do anything but sit and watch her sleep. It was unavoidable that she would wake, the connection always jostling her up. She would blink at his increasingly weary eyes smattered in bruises an alarming shade of mulberry. When she had asked what he was doing, he had merely shrugged and gestured to her resting form. It was incredibly considerate of him, she thought, to do nothing to aggravate her—which meant to precisely do nothing at all—even if the staring was somewhat unsettling. It felt too intimate that he should watch her at her most vulnerable, but she didn’t complain when rest finally returned to her.

Within a week, just as he’d said, she woke up to a crashing sound. Nothing in her room had been knocked over, but whatever he had knocked over in his quarters had made a very loud clatter in her mind. Rey winced at the sight of him passed out on her floor and _bleeding_. A cut slanted over his brow and had begun to drip around his eyelid and into the floor below. To her horror, the blood seemed to collect on _her_ floor. Somehow that made it more real.

Rey threw off her covers and sank to her knees in front of his prostrate form. She tried to push him awake, but when that didn’t work, she gently nudged his mind with the notion of waking as she guiltily tapped into the fight or flight triggers within his subconscious. His eyes flew open, and he tensed before settling on her. She shuddered as his eyes narrowed and a terribly fury spiked through the air. Still within his mind, his thoughts flew by her. _How could you? Ruined. It was under control._ He opened his mouth to shout, but instead he cried out as the pain lanced through his head as well as the accompanying sheer horror of being jolted from rest needed so desperately.

She rushed to cradle his head as he clutched his eye that burned from a painful mixture of blood and tears. Lifting a cup from across the room she always left filled with water (if ever a nightmare of deserts and thirst ever struck her in the night), she ripped off the bottom of her handed-down nightgown and set about cleaning up his eye and the cut. He hiccupped and cried pitifully and most astonishingly without any shame. Waves of confusion and fear and acute loss choked Rey from across the bond. She hadn’t even known they could project feeling to one another, let alone _so many_ of them. Setting aside all animosity she had harbored for him, she carded her fingers through his hair and tried to shush him.

Once the bleeding had stopped, and Rey was content that his vision would no longer be clouded by a pool of red, she attempted to move him to the bed. He pushed her away with shaking arms as he sat up himself and wept frantically. Rey swallowed the hurt from the rejection and endeavored to wrestle him into standing. It was not easy.

“Ben,” she panted as she caught a sailing wrist, “Ben, stop this. You need to sleep.”

“I was,” he feebly insisted.

“No, you passed out, and believe me, there is a difference!”

He ground out through gritted teeth as he made to pull his arm from her iron grasp, “I know there is! If you hadn’t woken me up, I would be enjoying blissful, empty silence.”

His unspoken words rattled around in her ears— _no nightmares_ —and she let him go. She opted to sit in front of him instead as they both stared darkly at one another and released shuddering breaths.

“I’m sorry,” she relented after a prolonged silence, “you scared me. You were hurt.”

His tone was still too severe as he snapped, “Sorry to disturb _your_ sleep. I’ll be sure to land _softer_ next time.”

She must have recoiled because his face resembled something softer with his eyes losing their malicious glint and his mouth losing the feral snarl. For a moment, he lowered his gaze to the floor between them and silently watched tears drip down his nose as if they were foreign to him. With a still trembling hand, he pressed the pads of his fingers under his eyes to collect the tears that continued to leak from them.

“I don’t know why I’m,” he interrupted his mumbling with a tremulous intake of air.

Rey’s voice was gentle like talking to a frightened animal, “You’re exhausted. You don’t have control of your own emotions. It’s alright.”

Everything made much more sense for her. It was no wonder that his moods were so volatile if he picked himself to the bone incessantly. He seemed to come to the same conclusion as he nodded solemnly to himself. Rey could feel their connection was seconds from ending.

She whispered in parting as she disappeared from his view, “Please take care of yourself, Ben.”

The next night, to her surprise, she awoke to his sleeping form. Almost comically, the connection had not joined their rooms correctly, and he was curled up on her desk quite literally. His tunic had been undone, but he only seemed to have managed to wrangle one of his arms free of it, and only one of his boots had been kicked off. The exposed ghostly paleness of his skin seemed to shine in the slivers of moonlight. That’s when she realized that he was drenched in sweat and taking great gulping breaths as if he had been running for ages and ages.

— _Nightmares_ —

Rey would have smiled at the way he had taken her words to heart and actually attempted to sleep if not for the suffering she sensed she had caused him for suggesting it. She slid out of bed and cautiously made her way over to him. She sat at the desk and grabbed one of his hands. A conundrum gripped her mind as she realized like the night before that he might not appreciate being woken up. As she held his hand, flashes of his dreams darted across her eyes.

— _Terrible lightning coursing through every bone, every muscle—twisted, gnarled hands sliding across skin, the feeling of being helplessly possessed—the familiar hand of someone loved caressing a cheek before falling into nothing—the color green humming above the head in the dark of night_ —

Rey gasped and held onto his hand tighter. She pushed a lock of hair from his sweaty forehead and, surprising herself, leaned forward to press a chaste kiss there.

Her lips hovered over his ear, and she whispered the same compassionate words he had given her months ago, “ _You’re not alone_.”

He whimpered and murmured in return, “Rey.”

She held her breath, fearing he had awoken. When nothing else happened, she sighed and took notice of the way his breathing had evened out and the shivering had ceased. Peace drifted across the bond, and Rey smiled to herself and laid her head on the surface of the desk.

When she woke, he was gone, and there was a stiffness in her neck that wasn’t likely to disappear before she would have to get back to her Resistance duties. Try as she may, she couldn’t bring herself to be miffed at him for it though. All soreness aside, it was the most well-rested she had ever felt.


End file.
